Out of all the top tier glyphs, this one is underused. I often find myself converting it when playing a bloodmage.

Here is a suggestion to make it more powerful (maybe a bit much though):With this glyph in your inventory, any time you cast a spell when you do not have enough mana, you will instead pay the difference in health equal to 1 HP per your level per mana point missing. When this happens you become corrupted and cannot benefit from health potions or healing spells (don't want to let an infinite loop with healing glyph to gain unlimited piety, or to have a net gain with a wizard).

I disagree; BLUDTUPOWA is working just fine. Not every character benefits from it, but anyone who has trouble keeping their mana topped up is going to love it. CYDSTEPP'ers need the extra mana regen to deal with the effects of exhaustion (and Warlords can eschew health regen altogether with it). Casters can pull regen antics with it without worrying about regenerating health which will not really help them. And it turns Binlor and Mystera into piety bonanzas. It's the most situational of the third tier glyphs, but in broader respect to the rest of the glyphs it's above average.

Really, BYSSEPS, GETINDARE, LEMMISI (even after the latest buff), WONAFYT, and WEYTWUT are all considerably less versatile and powerful than BLUDTUPOWA, so I don't see any merit to saying this one needs a rework.

Last edited by Darvin on Mon Dec 26, 2011 3:48 am, edited 1 time in total.

If there is a problem with BLUDTOPOWA underperforming, and I would be tempted to say that it's overpowered especially when it comes to building piety or crazy low level boss kill strategies, it's that Bloodmages don't get nearly as much benefit from it as several other classes do (at minimum, Wizards, Sorcerers, Rogues, Warlords, and now Vampires). It doesn't have much synergy with the other Bloodmage abilities. But they're not alone; Warlords, Assassins, and Paladins aren't the best at using their own glyphs, either.

On an unrelated note, in a peculiar way LEMMISI is actually weaker now than it was before. It used to be a reasonably useful glyph to spam with Mystera for piety (if you didn't have BLUDTOPOWA and didn't have some other glyph that can be spammed). Now it's much more inefficient since it earns less piety per revealed tile than any other glyph (1 piety for 3 tiles, compared with 1.5 piety for 3 tiles previously and 1 piety per 1 tile with BLUDTOPOWA and any other glyph).

If anything, I think BLUDTUPOWA's problem is that it's the glyph with the least intuitive strategical uses, which can make it rather unappealing for a newer player.I know it happened to me. When I first unlocked bloodmages I couldn't really figure out how to properly use it and ended up disregarding it entirely, and it took me a very long time until I finally decided to give it another chance.All other glyphs have at least one immediately obvious strategical use, but BLUDTUPOWA needs to be combo'd with other things, and figuring out how to properly do that is harder without a deeper understanding of the game mechanics.This is one of the things I'm hoping will be fixed once more focus is given to puzzles. One or two of these could really serve well to illustrate how BLUDTUPOWA can be useful.

That which is not dead may eternal lie, and with strange aeons even death may die.

Just prepare Fire Heart, BURNDAYRAZ, activate BLUDTOPOWA and from then on just use all the mana you regen by repeatedly blasting a single enemy 4-5 levels above you. Once the enemy gets enough Burning it will start taking more damage than it can regen during your exploration.Once you're at level 5 or so, you can start blasting the boss. If you found the boss early enough, you won't even need to use any potions.Levels with multiple bosses may need additional tricks though.

Only the vicious and borderline vicious levels (Deep Swamp, Slime Pit, Magma Mines) pose any real challenge to the burning heart bloodmage. Everywhere else he's basically got a 0% failure rate; I can't remember the last time this combo didn't carry the day on such a dungeon, and if you can find Mystera for a mana leak all the better. It's probably one of the most reliable class/preparation combos in the game.

Of course, it has staying power problems and once exploration is done you have to use your resources very wisely. On vicious dungeons, this means this build is weakest when you need to be strongest and that usually makes it non-viable.